A rare map of the most complex conflict on Earth

Congolese government troops stationed in the eastern
Democratic Republic of Congo.Stringer
./REUTERS

The war in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo
was one of the most complex conflicts on Earth, even
before the defeat of the M23 rebel movement, perhaps the
conflict's most powerful combatant, in
late 2013.

Although there are more than 1.6
million people displaced, along with frequent
fighting between the Congolese government and the region's
constellation of armed groups, the conflict often defies a label
as straightforward as "war."

Even after M23's downfall, the region is home to scores of
combatants whose motivations range from plunder and ethnic
self-defense to overthrowing the Congolese government and
overthrowing the governments of neighboring countries.

As a result, mapping the conflict can be
incredibly difficult. And the conceptual challenges aren't
the only reason that territorial maps,
like the ones that have become familiar for followers of the
conflicts in Syria and Iraq, are so difficult and time-consuming
to produce for the Congo.

Misinformation travels more easily than people in the
DRC's mountainous and underdeveloped eastern edge. And
mapping the region's armed groups requires
meticulous ground-level fieldwork in a difficult and often
dangerous environment.

The Congo Research
Group, a project at New York University's Center on
International Cooperation, has now produced a definitive map of
one of the world's most severe yet least-covered and -understood
conflicts. The map, published in October, shows the areas of
influence for 69 armed groups in the eastern Congo,
displaying where these groups carry out attacks, impose
taxation, or have a notable operational presence.

It's an invaluable piece of scholarship and reporting — and it
shows just how complex the situation has gotten.

Zones
of influence of armed groups in the eastern Democratic Republic
of the Congo.Congo
Research Group

While most of them
field fewer than 200 fighters each, their sheer number
reflects the Congolese state's inability to exert its authority
over the region, or to incentivize these groups to lay down their
arms. It also reveals a lack of cohesion among combatants —
and the ease with which local warlords or even political
leaders can mobilize their own militias.

The
location of North Kivu within the Democratic Republic of the
Congo. The area is the most persistent pocket of conflict in a
region that hasn't been totally at peace in two
decades.Google
Maps

The groups are also constantly splintering and shifting.
According to the
Congo Research Group report that accompanied the
group's map, there were 20 armed groups in the region in
2008, while the map shows the areas of influence of nearly 70
such groups.

As Christoph Vogel, a senior fellow at the Congo Research Group
and one of the creators of the CRG map, told Business Insider,
the map is just a snapshot of a highly fluid ground-level
situation.

"The half-life of such a mapping is extremely short as
conflict in eastern Congo is constantly evolving," says Vogel,
who adds that researchers learned of "two 'new' small
militias just days after publishing this map."

"It is literally impossible — even for the UN mission and
the government itself — to have absolutely correct and precise
information on each armed group's exact zone of control,"
Vogel told Business Insider.

Militias and the national military often operate in
the same areas, and the offices of the central government
sometimes remain open even in places
where antigovernment groups are strongest.

"In many areas, influence is not monopolized," Vogel
said.

Another built-in challenge of mapping the conflict is
that the size of an armed group's area of influence also doesn't
necessarily correlate with that group's actual
strength.

"Some stronger groups who traditionally maintain
rather tight control in small areas appear 'weaker' on the map
than smaller but very mobile groups covering intermittently a
much larger area," Vogel said.

Even with these inherent drawbacks, the map gives a vivid
sense of how the conflict in the eastern Congo has
persisted for so long — and of why even a seemingly major
development like the defeat of a leading rebel movement
wasn't enough to solve the region's problems.